On Friday, March 9th, Nadine and I met at Game Farm Park and laid tracks for each other. We planned it out in advance so we could lay cross-tracks for our own tracks. So I laid a well-marked track for Cricket and as I finished each leg, Nadine would lay the cross-tracks we planned. Then we went to where Gimme's track was to start and as Nadine laid Gimme's track, I did her cross-tracks. The dark line is the main track and the grey-dotted line is my cross track. Gimme's track was aged 70 minutes.

On Saturday, March 10th, Gimme and I went to Medline. Since she had struggled so much the week before with a 1 hour track, I decided to make this one just 50 minutes and made sure it was relatively simple. When I laid the track, the breeze was in my face, which I thought would be a great way to start.

This Thursday, March 15th, Nadine and I met at Auburn Cinema. The tracks were supposed to be 150 yard straight lines. We put a bend in Gimme's second track. Time got away from us, so her 45 minute track was actually aged 75 minutes.

Yesterday, Saturday, March 17th, Gimme and I went to Medline for tracking. Since I hadn't gotten a reply from Sil for my recent questions, I decided to do something different.
I've noticed Gimme can be very visual. She's happy to follow her nose when it seems to work for her, but she is likely to switch to visual mode if it's challenging. This is especially true on pavement where it's so easy to see articles from a distance. Gimme has gotten very good at spotting even just a line of shadow from articles which otherwise blend in. So I made her some new weighted cloth articles, more likely to blend on pavement and really small. I also cut up some of the articles to make them even smaller. The largest article was just 2½ by 2½ inches and some were only 1 inch by 1 inch.

I got a reply from Sil in the evening. The two questions and answers were:
1) Recently I've noticed what seemed to be a trend where Gimme does great on older tracks laid by Nadine and then still has trouble with tracks I lay. So I wondered if dogs have a harder time following their owner's tracks, since they live with the scent all the time. We know dogs don't habituate to scents in the same way humans do, but I wondered if being around the scent made it not stand out for them.
Sil said it was not generally a problem. He thought it more likely I wasn't aware of some other factor, or factors, creating a challenge.
2) I asked him if I could use scent intensifiers in aging. It seemed like a possibility, but I wondered if intensifying the scent defeated the purpose of aging it.
Sil said there were two factors to track age. One is the weakening of scent, which would apply to scent intensifiers just like normally laid tracks. The other factor is how tracks change chemically with age. So in a sense, starting with a stronger scent splits the task into two parts. Gimme can be learning about the chemical change while still working with a stronger smell. So, I'll be playing with this to help her get over the hump.
Today, March 18th, we didn't get a chance to go for a walk and because of my schedule I needed to have Gimme with me so she could get her medication on time.

I didn't mark the track or even make a map, so when she got off the track, up under the trees where the ground was covered in needles, I couldn't be sure how to organize her searching. She finally decided on something I thought was too far down, but it got her close enough so she picked up the track in a place where I knew it was and then dragged me to the glove. She got all my cheese and when we got to the car, got her pill in peanut butter.
NOTE TO SELF ---> I really must not take shortcuts when laying a track. Surely I've proven my memory is not accurate enough to rely on.
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